


Looking Within

by flipflop_diva



Category: Avengers Academy (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Friendship, Timefog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21897487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: It started with a hissing noise from the timefrog. It ended with a friend Loki never thought he would have.
Relationships: Loki & Natasha Romanov
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Looking Within

**Author's Note:**

  * For [100indecisions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/100indecisions/gifts).



It had happened without warning. He had been standing by the edge of campus, sneering at everyone who walked by and trying to turn a few lucky ones into a frog. (What? He was bored, and if there was one thing Migardians were good for — okay, the _only_ thing Migardians were good for — it was to keep him amused by their ever-growing ability to make fools of themselves in all occasions).

The timefog had been acting weird lately, if timefog could act weird. Loki hadn’t paid much mind to it. He usually didn’t bother with such inconsequential items when he had more important things to worry about, but even he couldn’t fail to notice the Migardians yammering on about it. Especially Armor Man and Bug Woman who seemed to be excited about hearing noises coming from within it. Loki had thought at the time that they had probably imagined it.

But then he had been standing there, and he’d heard a noise unlike anything he had ever heard before. A hissing, but not like it had come from an animal.

Loki paused, the words to turn the little former Hydra goon who was walking by into a frog disappearing from his lips, as he turned to stare at the foggy area behind him. It looked like it always looked — a sea of gloomy fog with occasional indistinct shapes floating through it.

He stared into it, trying to listen.

There! That hissing again. He took another step toward the timefog, staff out, like that would help him decipher what he was hearing.

And then he saw it. One of the indistinct shapes seemed to take form right before his eyes. Loki stared, his staff slipping from his fingers to clatter on the sidewalk, but he didn’t hear it. All he could focus on was _him_.

He was in the timefog. But it wasn’t him. Not really.

He was older, much older, like he had aged decades from where he was now. And he was holding a stone — one of the Infinity Stones it looked like — the blue one — and he was defiant, holding out the stone to someone, his face in a smug grin.

Loki kept watching the older version of himself, watched as the stone was snatched from his hand by something he couldn’t see, watched as the older version of himself crumpled to the ground.

Loki started, leaped backward, knocking into someone. They both went down.

He heard a soft “Oof” under him, and he leapt to his feet.

“Natasha!” Loki said, so surprised he called her by her actual name. He reached a hand down to her and helped her to her feet.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said.

“Not a ghost exactly,” he said, before he could ask himself why he was even telling her. But then, of all the Migardians, she was the one he liked the best. Or, well, tolerated the best at least.

“Did you see a past version of yourself?” she asked. Her face belied no emotion, but he stared at her curiously.

“I saw a future version of myself,” he said. “You saw a past version of yourself?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “Something like that.”

He kept looking at her, waiting for her to expand, but she was looking past him now, into the timefog. 

Whatever. He turned to walk away, but she spoke again.

“I saw me, as a little girl, training. But it _wasn’t_ me. I was … different … somehow.” She turned her head to look at him.

“What do you think it was?” Loki asked her. “Someone playing tricks on us?”

Natasha pursed her lips. “Tony said he thinks maybe there’s a doorway of sorts in there that leads to alternate universes, and other versions of ourselves are getting drawn here, to be trapped.”

Loki pondered that. It seemed … definitely like something that Armor Man would come up with. 

“Are we sure it’s not some new villain of the week?” he said.

“No, we’re not sure,” Natasha said. “But in the timefog?”

“Why not? Everyone knows it’s here.”

She looked unsure. 

“What? You want it to be some past version of yourself trapped in there?”

“No. … I don’t know …”

There was something she wasn’t telling him. A picture of his own future self popped into his mind. Defiant, smirking. Falling.

“You saw yourself die,” he said, but it wasn’t a question. He knew she had. “As a child.”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

“We should go in there.”

“What?”

“The timefog. We should go in there. You want to, don’t you? To see what it really is?”

Natasha turned her head to look at the creepy fog, wisps moving in and out and seemingly all around them.

“Come on,” Loki said. “I’ll protect you.”

A smirk finally broke across her face.

“You don’t believe me? We’re friends, right?”

Natasha laughed. “Something like that,” she said.

\--

They didn’t go into the timefog. They talked about it, all the time. He would find Natasha, or she would find him, and they would talk about how they would do it. They had spells they could use, they had tech they could use, they could bring with them one of the other students who also had magic — “Do you not think I’m enough?” Loki would ask her. “Do you not think I’m enough?” she would ask back — they could bring with them some of the many robots around campus, since they probably wouldn’t be affected.

They could fly in on a Quinjet. They could fly in with suits that Armor Man could make for them. “Maybe Amora can enchant a broomstick for us,” Loki cackled at one point.

They could have Bug Woman make them outfits that would be impenetrable by magic or tech or ghosts from alternate dimensions. They could have Armor Man make them armor that would do the same thing. 

Or they could just walk in, hand in hand, dressed as they always are, ready to face whatever it was that was in there.

But yet they didn’t go. They talked about it and they watched it and they studied it from afar. Sometimes Loki would find himself standing on the edge of campus, looking into the timefog, waiting for something to appear.

But when Natasha appeared behind him instead of the future him appearing in the timefog and an uncontained smile broke out over his face at the sight, Loki always reassured himself that he was most definitely _not_ making friends with a Midgardian and that it most definitely had not been her he had really been waiting for.

Even if it had.


End file.
